U.S. Visitor Traffic to Thunder Bay on the Increase This Year

It is a pretty significant fact that we are a forty five minute drive from the U.S. border and a source market in excess of three hundred and thirty million people.  Despite conditions of the past decade, the U.S. market continues to be important to us.  However, this market has declined over the past decade in a world of security and economic issues, coupled with inconsistent marketing investments to keep our region top of mind.

In light of the slow US economy, passport requirements, border security, high fuel prices and an at par currency, you'll have to understand if we're a little giddy today in the Tourism Thunder Bay office.

The second quarter border crossing statistics came in this week and to the end of June 2012, U.S. visitors to Thunder Bay through the Pigeon River border crossing have increased by 3.5% or about 1068 persons.  While not explosive year over year growth, its slow and steady as the old tortoise versus hare fable goes, and that's what wins the race. 

While same day traffic declined, it was the important overnight visits that increased, improving hotel performance in what is already a strong urban market.  These longer stays translate into increased economic impacts for our community and region and speak to a desire for avid travellers to explore in greater depth. From an economic impact perspective, this translates to approximately $370 596 in new visitor spending and a total economic impact including the multiplier effect of about $592 953.  Overall, that's a pretty good return early on even before the critically important July and August travel data is reported.  By about late October, we'll have a good sense of the true impact of the new investments being made. 

With approximately $1.1 million in new regional tourism marketing investments being made across Northwestern Ontario in the fishing, hunting, broad outdoors, convention, sports tourism and motor touring segments, its encouraging to see some early wins.  From our early indicators, the majority of this upswing is related to touring and outdoor adventure segment campaigns specifically into the United States totalling approximately $275 000.  This included the popular "Ride Lake Superior" motorcycle program, enhanced broad outdoor campaigns targeting Minnesota and Wisconsin and wider reaching US avid outdoor media channels.  We've also been able to host far more media familiarization trips, and build new relationships with US media such as Northern Wilds, Lake Superior Magazine and AAA media channels to grow interest in the area.  Tying the natural environment to the highway corridors is critical to maximizing visitor attraction.  Most travellers are outdoor enthusiasts but very few want to really rough it.  trails and waterfalls, birding, beaches and so forth are all huge draws but visitors want a good meal and comfy bed too.  communicating the epic-ness of Lake Superior - and our hundreds of thousands of other lakes too - will be critical to growing our markets.

The majority of the Northwest's angling traffic flows through Fort Frances so we'll be watching those numbers closely as well and reporting on the broader impacts.

The regional approach to partnership building is critical to continuing to build on these early successes and together with partners like Sunset Country Travel Association, Algoma Kinnewabi Travel and our friends in Northern Minnesota, we'll continue to work together to make the visitor pie bigger for everyone by focusing on epic experiences worth the distance. 

After all, how far would you travel for the perfect outdoor vacation?

Thunder Bay April Hotel Occupancy Remains Strong

Thunder Bay's April hotel performance continues to demonstrate growth with one of Canada's highest occupancy rates for the month.

April occupancy grew 4.8 points to 73% from 68.2% in April 2010 while RevPar increased 3.7 points to $67.68 from $65.28 a year ago. Average daily rate dropped however, from $95.74 to $92.71, signalling continued price competition within the marketplace that's ultimately benefiting the consumer. The Canadian average occupancy rate was 56.9%, up only .6 points from April 2010's 56.3%. Only the red hot Regina market and Yukon outperformed Thunder Bay on the occupancy level.

A continued strong meeting and convention segment, including the Northwestern Ontario Mines and Minerals Symposium, drove the April economy followed by a series of modest sport tourism events that, combined, contributed significantly to the city's overall occupancy performance. Thunder Bay's reputation provincially for hosting unique quality sport and corporate events combined with our significant air corridor coverage continues to be our strength in growing these important tourism segments.

Tourism Thunder Bay reports local accommodation performance from data provided by PKF Consulting. Tourism partners seeking greater detail of information should contact PKF directly

March Hotel Occupancy Continued its Occupancy Rate Rise.

March 2011 continued to be a strong month for Thunder Bay's accommodation sector with occupancy levels among the highest in Canada. Healthy increases are reported over March 2010, which in itself was stronger over the previous year. Lets face it. 2009 was a year most of the global tourism industry wants to forget anyway.

Hotel occupancy rose to 72%, up 2.7 points from 69.3 in March 2010. Average daily rate, however dipped to $92.32 from $96.54, signaling price competition among various properties to attract guests. This price competition translated into a slight dip in revenue per available room by 0.6% to $66.43 from $66.86 a year ago.
Overall, Thunder Bay's hotel performance continued to outshine the nation average of 57.6% and our growth rate outpaced the 1.6% national average. Revenue per available room locally, however, remains lower than the national average of $70.82.

A strong March is likely due to strong mining and health sciences related domestic corporate travel to the city, and reasonably strong sport tourism attendance for the annual Sibley Ski tour. While spring break brought some regional domestic leisure traffic into the city, the strong Canadian dollar has translated into many heading into Minnesota.

We report hotel performance based on data supplied by PKF Consulting. For our tourism partners seeking more detailed data, they can contact PKF directly.

City Tourism Partners Win City Green Awards

Two city tourism partners have been recognized this month for their efforts to reduce waste and energy consumption. As many know, I am an advocate of seeing Thunder Bay's tourism industry becoming leaders in urban sustainable tourism. Its been great to see so many local tourism partners embrace these principals and understand that environmental and economic sustainability can co exist.

The Prince Arthur Waterfront Hotel and Suites, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, recently installed new boilers that have reduced energy consumption by a whopping 30% and installed a new commercial dishwasher that cuts both the amount of water and detergent use by almost half. The old washing unit was recycled for its stainless steel value. During the recent room renovations, the hotel donated their older furnishing to Habitat for Humanity, ensuring they could find a new life and support a great local charity rather than end up in the city landfill.

And once again OLG Casino Thunder Bay was recognized for its work in reducing energy consumption by 12%, rounding up over 62 000 pounds of used electronics for recycling and planting, maintaining and donating the vegetables from their own community garden.

Congratulations to these two local tourism partners that embrace environmental sustainability. For more information on the City's environmental programs, click here.

Thunder Bay's Hotel Occupancy Ends 2010 on a High Note.

The December 2010 hotel performance numbers are in and Thunder Bay continued to show improved performance right to the end of the year, particularly interesting given how difficult December traditionally is to fill hotel rooms when convention traffic winds down prior to the Christmas holidays and Christmas leisure traffic generally stays with friends and family.

Thunder Bay's hotel occupancy rate in December was 55.4%, up 5.2 points over the previous year and we reported the highest occupancy for the entire country. Average daily rate increased 4.6% to $95.48 and revenue per available room shot up 15.3% to $52.91. The average Canadian occupancy rate for December 2010 was 44.8%.

Year end results continue to support growth in the hotel segment, with the city posting a 70.5% occupancy rate, up 5.2 points from 2009. The City saw modest growth of 1.1% on Average daily rate, and a 9.2% increase in RevPar to $68.81. By contrast, the Canadian industry posted a 60.3% occupancy rate for the year.

This data is from PKF Consulting Trends Report. For tourism partners seeking more detailed information, please contact PKF at www.pkfcanada.com for their range of services to the tourism and hospitality industries.

September Hotel Occupancies Continue to Show Growth

September continued to see strong growth in the Thunder Bay accommodations sector, with occupancies, average daily rates and RevPar all seeing noticeable increases.

• Hotel occupancies rose 5.9% in September over the previous year to 83.8% from 77.8%.
• The Average daily rate rose slightly to $99.36 from $97.99 a year ago
• Revenue per available room rose a substantial 9.1% to $83.22 from $76.25

By contrast,the Canadian average occupancy rate was 70.2% or 2.4% greater than in 2009. Average daily room rate was $131.14, up.6% from 130.31 a year ago. Revenue per available room was $92,02, up 4.1% from 88.37.

This data is extracted from the PKF September 2010 National Market Report and we publish only the local and national data. We encourage our tourism partners looking for more depth of hotel performance data to contact PKF directly for their range of products and services at pkfcanada.com

Thunder Bay's occupancy rate remained one of the highest of any market in the country in September. However, the city is still a relative bargain, posting one of the lower daily average room rate and revenue per room rates nationally. This is certainly a competitive advantage, especially when bidding on cost sensitive sport and convention business. However, there may be room for some modest upward growth in room rates without compromising that advantage.

September proved to be a strong year on several fronts, buoyed by a stronger than normal fall touring leisure market and a strong corporate, meeting and convention market. Usually, September sees a bit of a downward turn locally as the summer leisure market drops and the fall convention travel market hasn't quite picked up from the summer vacation period.

We're pleased to see this upward trend continue, the result of a number of positive developments in the local economy around mining and health sciences, better air connectivity to the GTA with Porter, Westjet and Jazz, capital re investments in a number of properties and a more enhanced focus on the fall touring markets through OTMPC and AAA partnerships.

Tourism Thunder Bay Helps Tourism’s Front Line Professionals Rediscover the City

Tourism Thunder Bay is helping tourism’s front line professionals discover Thunder Bay in a whole new way. The Tourism Division of the City, in partnership with the Prince Arthur Hotel and Lake Superior Visits, is providing a one day tour on Thursday May 27th of the city’s main attractions to educate visitor centre, hotel front desk, restaurant and tourism related retail partners.

Front line tourism professionals in hotels, visitor centers, gas stations and restaurants play an important role in promoting the City’s attractions and events to visitors who come into their businesses and often ask questions about what to see and do. Giving them the knowledge of all there is to see and do helps improve the visitor experience. The tour builds awareness and pride among the tourism professionals and allows them to network with each other. To sell Thunder Bay to the world, we have to start by selling it to ourselves.”

The day long motor coach tour, beginning at 8:30 AM at the Terry Fox Visitor Centre, will wind its way through the city exploring the communities major attractions and hidden gems. Lois Nuttal of Lake Superior Visits, a local tour operator, will share stories, legends and other information with the tour participants that reveal the diverse fabric of our culture and our connection to our natural environment. Lunch is sponsored by the Prince Arthur Hotel and ABC Embroidery is providing “Thunder Bay bucket list” tote bags. Given the overwhelming interest by the industry with this tour, Tourism Thunder Bay is considering additional opportunities to repeat the educational program throughout the spring.

A media opportunity is available at 8:30 AM at the Terry Fox Visitor Centre this Thursday, May 27th.

September Hotel Performance Lower but Still Ahead of National Trends

September's hotel performance statistics are in and while room demand is moderately down over September 2008, the city remains one of the least adversely affected Canadian markets in 2009.

Room demand is down 5.9% over September 2008. Occupancy levels have dropped to 73.7% from 79% a year ago and average daily room rates have increased from $94.64 to $98.18. Within this time frame an additional 1% of room capacity has been added to the 2288 rooms in the district inventory largely through expansion of existing properties. In essence, while occupancy and room demand is down, it appears that increased revenue through the increased average daily room rates could offset the room demand drop. Theoretically, properties aren't necessarily taking in any less gross revenues than last September

For the year to date, hotel performance is down 2.1% compared to the end of Q3 2008. While down, it still remains the 3rd strongest hotel market for 2008 after the red hot Regina/Saskatoon market and Quebec City. Its important to look at the performance within the context of the environment we're all operating in and compare to other national markets to identify the true opportunities and threats. The truth remains that for our urban tourism industry, the sky is definitely not falling. We do, however, have to remain vigilant, know our performance, understand our markets and respond pragmatically.

This September's decrease over 2008 is likely tied to a number of factors including poor weather that impacted fall touring in the leisure segment, a constriction of corporate overnight meeting and convention travel and the fact that the end of September 2008 saw 450 participants beginning to arrive in Thunder Bay for the Canadian Armed Forces SAREX competitions.

However, its also important for us to review this data, identify low periods and plan adjustments to our future tourism marketing and promotion strategy to help rebuild market share. Our recently released new meeting and convention attraction program and a larger hands on presence at Canada's leading convention planners industry showcases, the introduction of the inaugural September 2010 Thunder Bay marathon and adjustments to our participation in Lake Superior touring promotion are all underway to rebuild traffic for next year.

To follow national hotel performance trends yourself, visit http://www.hvs.com/Library/Articles/?ac=canadian%20lodging

August Hotel Occupancy Continues to Show Optimism In challenging Environment

HVS Canada has released its August hotel performance for all major markets in Canada and once again, Thunder Bay's accommodation sector has continued to hold steady in a challenging international environment.

Room demand in August 2009 was up 0.8% while occupancy rates were down slightly to 77.6% from 77.7% in 2008. While flat performance is normally nothing to get too excited about, this has been the year the tourism industry was facing unprecedented challenges and everyone, including ourselves, was expecting to see some sort of notable decrease. This is the year where measuring our performance relative to other cities is just as important as measuring our performance to past years.

With most major markets reporting declines in August, including Windsor (down 36.7%) and Edmonton (down 10%), Thunder Bay was joined in reporting increases by Sudbury, Vancouver and Saskatoon.

Overall, Thunder Bay's year to date performance is down modestly 1.1% over the same 8 months of 2008. Once again, while a concern in normal years, it is the least significant decline of all but one hotel market - Saskatoon, who posted a 1% increase.

While summer corporate markets are typically softer, stronger mineral exploration and health sciences segments have likely given our corporate segment a summer boost. With respect to the traditionally strong summer segments of leisure, VFR and sport tourism there are likely a number of reasons market share has remained steady, including strong visiting friends and family travel to the city and a shift in our U.S. based campaigns with a focus on touring and avid outdoor seekers that brought stronger than expected US travel to the city in June and July.

Despite these positive performance indicators, we have to remain vigilant and continue to build traffic in both new and core existing markets. The release of these numbers has continuously created a positive buzz about the City's economy over the past few months and we are constantly asked at industry functions about the local environment. Maintaining the current positive buzz and using new media tools to promote more of this news has the effect of positioning the city more successfully as a destination of choice because we all know, people want to go where other people are going.

To see the full results, visit http://www.hvs.com/Library/Articles/?ac=canadian%20lodging

Canadian Lodging Outlook has Thunder Bay Market holding Steady

There's no doubt that 2009 ranks up there as one of the most challenging years facing the Canadian travel industry, especially in markets that rely on U.S. visitors.

While I previously reported that Thunder Bay's hotel performance to the end of May was steady (0.0% change over y.t.d 2008), June saw performance dip slightly, ending up the first half of the year with a -0.6% change. Given passport requirements, slow U.S. economy any high Canadian dollar value, this decrease in demand should not be cause for too much concern. Given that every hotel market in Canada was down for the first 6 months of 2009 except Windsor (+4% change), Thunder Bay's room demand decline was still the most modest of every urban market in Canada.

Thunder Bay's 6 month average occupancy rate for 2009 is 62.3%, up from 62% in 2008. Average daily room rate is $93.13, down from $93.98 in 2008 and average revenue per room is $58.02, down slightly from $58.27 in 2008.

Individual July weekly performance in Thunder Bay has been mixed, with some declining weeks and others in the positive category but it appears overall, that our summer leisure traffic season appears to be weathering the industry's changing demographics remarkably well.

Our prediction for the remainder of the year sees a stable meeting and convention market kicking in late September to early December that will keep hotel demand steady and we anticipate Porter's (www.flyporter.com) arrival in the City at the end of June may help contribute to a strong fall corporate travel market.

To follow hotel performance, visit www.hvs.com/library.